Turkey Passes Law to Stop Pervasive Violence Against Women

A Turkish woman with fake bruises stands with protesters holding placard reading ''end violence'' during a demonstration to protest against rape, killings and domestic violence against women, in Ankara last year. ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images)

International women’s day in Turkey began with the murder of a woman seeking shelter from family violence in a medical center. It ended in Ankara with the Turkish Parliament passing a bill “to protect the family and to prevent violence against women.”

The long-overdue bill was badly needed. “What do we have in Turkey?” a representative of one of Turkey’s leading women’s rights groups asks in Today’s Zaman. “Violence against women, exploitation of female labor and bodies, female poverty, female unemployment, child brides and girls who are not sent to school.”

This assessment is supported by equally bleak statistics: According to the Turkish police, 78,488 incidents of domestic violence were registered in the 19 months between February 2010 and August 2011 — an average of one incident of domestic violence every ten minutes. Since this number includes only officially reported incidents, it is likely that the actual number was far higher.

Whether this move by the Turkish government will significantly improve Turkey’s depressing record on protecting women from violence remains an open question. Initial reports do not indicate that the quality and number of women’s shelters will increase to meet the needs of the country’s battered and threatened women any time in the near future. Still, it is a step forward. Let us hope that there will be a significant reduction in the number of incidents such as the one that initiated International Women’s Day in Istanbul.

Related Posts

About William Jones

William Jones, Chair of Amnesty International USA's Turkey Coordination Group, has twice been a Fulbright Professor in Turkey and served for four years with the American Embassy in Ankara as Cultural Attache.View all postsRSS Feed

AIUSA welcomes a lively and courteous discussion that follow our Community Guidelines. Comments are not pre-screened before they post but AIUSA reserves the right to remove any comments violating our guidelines.

2 thoughts on “Turkey Passes Law to Stop Pervasive Violence Against Women”

In common law jurisdictions, three key elements to the creation of a contract are necessary: offer and acceptance, consideration and the intention to create legal relations. In Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company a medical firm advertised that its new wonder drug, the smokeball, would cure people's flu, and if it did not, the buyers would get £100.